Flying High

At last he said, ‘Next week you must come to the studio to watch.’

I was so looking forward to being introduced to the charmed circle of artists. I hoped perhaps these people would become my friends. Here was an opportunity to get to know people. The language barrier wouldn’t matter once we started painting pictures together. I felt quite privileged.

I cycled over an hour in the rain to get to the studio on the other side of the city. It was a large grey building with dirty cracked windows, and inside the main room, in light I would have thought inadequate for painting, there were rows of artists producing delicate watercolours for tourists and diplomats. Liang welcomed me with a large smile and looked straight into my eyes, which he had never done before. He was larger than life on his own territory. Complicity with foreigners was not on, so what was he trying to say? Then I realized he was beginning to treat me as a friend. I was glad I’d made the effort to come. With the weather being so foul and the prospect of cold wet clinging clothes all afternoon I’d nearly stayed in the flat, but indoors and outdoors were equally cold and dank, so what did it matter? Anyway I was curious to see him on his own ground, I wanted to know what made him tick and I wanted to meet his friends.

‘Mr Wu paints tigers. One of his pictures was presented to an African diplomat last month. We are all very proud of him.’

I smiled, slightly embarrassed. The idea of an art factory seemed so Chinese. Several artists beamed up at me as if I was visiting royalty. I still hadn’t made enough progress with my Chinese to say more than hello.

One man was painting carp from life. I was disturbed to see the fish darting around an enamel bowl, confused, their scales reflecting light from the neon strip lights above, their silly eyes staring as if in fright and their mouths mouthing a silent message. They swam aimlessly round and round, sometimes in a figure of eight. The artist had captured their movement and their fearful staring. They would be trapped in the enamel bowl until the picture was finished, then, their aesthetic purpose over, disposed of in a practical manner.

‘What will you do with them?’ I asked.

‘Eat them,’ said Liang, a mock serious look on his face.

‘But they’re pets, aren’t they?’

‘We don’t have pets here. Only rich people have pets. We like our animals best in the cooking pot.’

I was beginning to understand that my fatuous comment about a carp being a pet was very Western. The idea that eating carp was cruel suddenly struck me as silly in this context – it made more sense to eat them than to have these slithery cold creatures as pets. I had no choice but to start perceiving life around me in a more practical way. I started to see how much I was spoiled, prejudiced and set in my ways. I had recently started to dismiss the voice of Martin that often echoed around in my head pointing out various wickednesses and cruelties. He had started to irritate me. Who was he to impose his pampered views on people?

The visit to the studio was the first time I’d been interested in the real China as opposed to the fairytale version that lingered as a fantasy. I had enjoyed it in an unexpected way. It wasn’t how I’d imagined it at all, but better. It was as if the experience had taught me something, refreshed me. It was Liang who had gradually wrought the beginnings of change in me. I was at last starting to absorb those new experiences I so badly wanted and the catalyst was Liang. It was Liang who made it possible for me to open up. He too was beginning to change. No longer the distant and polite teacher. He began to be aware of me as a person. I was no longer just an awkward and large foreigner, but a source of information about outside, a companion and possibly even a woman. I reluctantly admitted to myself that I was beginning to feel a little excited in his presence. I found myself looking at the back of his neck, noticing his neat ears and his remarkable long eyelashes. I couldn’t stop myself looking at him, partly out of fascination and curiosity at his differentness and partly in the way one looks affectionately on an intelligent pet. He seemed so young. He was about the same age as me, but his cheeks looked boyishly smooth. I wondered if he shaved. His hair had the gloss of a child’s hair, which was a wonder considering the nasty sticky shampoo they used.

‘You know, Miss Alison,’ he said one day, ‘I’m really interested in seeing your country. I often listen to the BBC and VOA. I feel I know the West already. It’s different from here, isn’t it? You’ve got so much freedom. You can choose your job, your politicians, your friends …’

‘But Liang, you can choose your friends too, can’t you?’ It occurred to me that my self-appointed role of ‘friend’ to him was perhaps not exactly his choice.

‘Not really. We don’t have many friends here, not in the sense you mean it. People suspect one another, and besides you’ve probably noticed that we often say “classmates” when we’re referring to people we know. That’s because they’re people we studied with. What chance do we have to meet anyone else? You can see what it’s like in my unit. Apart from them you’re the only person I see. You’re the only outsider in my life.’ The idea that I was now ‘in his life’ sent a small shudder through me.

‘What about your family?’

‘Relatives,’ he said with a grimace.

‘What’s wrong with relatives?’ I asked, knowing what he was going to say.

‘Obligation,’ he said. ‘My wife was given to me by my uncle. She’s the daughter of some remote member of his wife’s family. When I got to twenty-seven and I wasn’t married, they said, “Liang, it’s time you had a child.” They’re peasants, you see. Within six months I was married to Wang and a year later my son was born.’

‘Couldn’t you have chosen your own wife? Why did you let them do this to you?’ I was beginning to feel resentment towards these primitive people who were his family. Didn’t they realize that he had the right to make his own choices in life? How could they foist some stranger on him like that? It was absurd.

‘It must have been awful for you.’ I realized this sounded feeble, like a schoolgirl commiserating over an embarrassing parent.

‘Not awful. I just did my duty to my family. They were right. I needed to get married and I hadn’t met anyone suitable. A man of twenty-seven can’t stay single.’

I’d been in China long enough to know he was right. He would have been regarded as a freak or people would have suspected his reasons for avoiding women.

I wanted to ask him if he loved her. I needed to know. But I was certain he didn’t. He was obviously trapped for eternity in an enforced relationship which was meaningless and gave him no joy. But he always seemed joyful enough as if it was never on his mind. He never mentioned the child.

We were seeing each other more and more. He was obviously growing fonder of me, wanting my company. And I wanted him too. I thought about him a lot. I often found myself daydreaming about him as I stood before my forty undergraduates, crammed into filthy Classroom Number Three where I attempted to teach the rudiments of English Literature. The uncomprehending faces stared back, obedient but totally unabsorbed. I must have looked as uninterested as they did. My mind was elsewhere too.

One day a group of runners training for a sports meeting ran past the open window. My adrenalin suddenly whirled as I saw Liang among them. But no, it was just someone who looked like him. It couldn’t have been him. He was wearing blue cotton running shorts and a white singlet with a figure of eight on the back and grey plimsolls without socks. His thin legs were spattered with mud and his shoulders were hunched in the cold. So unlike Martin’s rugby player’s physique. I watched him as he ran, unaware of me, intent on his task of forging ahead of the others. I thought of Liang’s slight body, unclothed – his knees and elbows, his small buttocks – and felt a blush spreading over my neck. I was jolted back to my yawning class who had noticed nothing. They sat impassively picking their noses, scratching their armpits and staring blankly through me as before.

How Liang managed to get away from his unit I never discovered. The painting lessons continued, sometimes at my flat and sometimes at his studio and I eventually managed to produce a passable, rather sentimental picture of kittens and peonies which I had mounted on a scroll. We both began to be aware that painting was no longer the only interest we had in common. I positively looked forward to his visits. We would both invent reasons for him to come.

‘I’d better have a look at your bike,’ he’d say, knowing full well that the University Bicycle Workshop checked it regularly for me.

Or he’d say, ‘Have you taken your winter ginseng? I’ll get you some at the medicine store.’

And I would cut out articles about life in the West for him and save him my Guardian Weekly. Without a telephone, we had no choice but to meet often.

He helped me with many of the small things I found so taxing in my first months in China.

It was him who showed me how to eat properly. I had been trying to survive on boiled eggs and boiled vegetables which was all I could manage to cook on the pathetic gas ring provided in my kitchen. The oil smelt so vile I couldn’t fry anything. When I tried, the wok sent up clouds of smoke and the food tasted as if it had been cooked in engine oil. Liang primed my wok for me and expertly showed me how to heat the oil to the right point. He flicked vegetables and fatty scraps of pork around and made feasts.

I gave up going to the market by myself. I waited for him to come and we would set out on an adventure. What used to be a painful experience became fun. We tried out anything new that came into season and rushed back to the flat to cook it. I ate everything: eels, their tiny heads nailed to a board while their long bodies were split with a sharp knife, rabbits bought live and their fragile necks cracked, their white fur peeled off like peeling an orange, tiny salty dried shrimp, sweet creamy yoghourt in chunky pottery jars, and delicate translucent hundred-year-old eggs with their glinting green and orange hues. Food became a fascination to me and I even discarded the fork and spoon I’d carried everywhere and learned awkwardly to wield chopsticks. I still couldn’t bring myself to use the bamboo ones in restaurants which you had to clean up with a bit of exercise book kept in the pocket for the purpose.

We started meeting on Sundays. Usually he’d come in the afternoon. I didn’t ask what he did in the morning. I was vaguely aware he might have family commitments but kept the idea at the very back of my mind. When the weather was still cold in March I lay one Sunday morning beneath my quilt, comfortable, with the sounds of the campus outside. I’d been reading one of Martin’s letters and thinking of home. He wanted me to meet him at the end of the term and have a holiday. He would come out on a package tour and I could join him in Peking. Somehow I didn’t feel elated enough about the prospect of seeing him. I wouldn’t say my heart sank exactly, but it almost did. While I was trying to sift through my thoughts on the subject, there was a tap at the door and I knew it was Liang, very early.

‘Hang on – I’ll put my dressing-gown on.’

I rushed eagerly to open the door and there he was, clutching a small parcel in pink wrapping paper tied with a piece of string.

‘This is a little gift for you.’

‘Can I open it?’

‘Go on.’ His eyes were wide with anticipation. More than ever he seemed childlike. I recalled the runners and had to look away.

It was a set of silk hand-embroidered handkerchiefs, totally impractical but pretty in a fussy Chinese sort of way. It was the sort of gift a man gives to a woman.

‘But it isn’t my birthday, Liang.’ This was silly. Birthdays didn’t mean much here.

‘No, I thought you’d like them. My cousin works at the embroidery factory,’ he said by way of justification. Suddenly I felt a rush of sentiment, of joy and of something I had never felt in the presence of Martin. I wanted to fling my arms round him and dance.

I can’t think how I restrained myself, but I felt as if I was saving it for a later I knew would come. I increasingly enjoyed the thought of it. We went out on our cycle ride, him pedalling protectively on the traffic side of the cycle lane, telling me when to stop, when to turn, giving disapproving glances when other cyclists jostled me. He was still somewhat astonished that I could ride a bike as he was certain all Westerners drove around in large cars.

We sat together in a tea house in those low bamboo chairs. An ancient man in a grubby apron poured water from a steaming black kettle as we clattered the lids of our tea dishes. I looked at Liang and wanted urgently to know more about him. He was deliberately uncommunicative about his personal life, as if his life in my presence was the only life he had.

‘Liang, why don’t you bring your wife along?’ I ventured, uncertain of his response. I couldn’t even remember her name.

‘She’s busy,’ he said evasively, looking at the violinist squeakily performing at the far end of the tea house.

‘But you never talk about her.’ Then I dared to ask, ‘Don’t you get on?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well, aren’t you and your wife good friends?’

‘She’s my wife,’ he said as if this explained everything.